Blinding
by Siruru
Summary: There needs to be a way to change this. Fem!Shep/Joker. Implied EDI/Joker. Spoilers to Mass Effect 3.


_No more calling like a crow for a boy,_

_For a body in the garden_

_No more dreaming like a girl,_

_So in love with the wrong world_

-_Blinding_, Florence + the Machine

Commander Shepard looks at her team, beaten but alive on the floor of the Normandy. Everyone is back within the former Cerberus vessel. Her blue eyes scan the group and beyond the traumatized crew personnel that had been brought back because of Mordin. Miranda is leaning slightly onto Jacob who is nursing a wound at his side from leading the second diversion team. Garrus is leaning onto his trusted rifle with Tali resting on the floor next to him with the air coming out of her environmental dramatically heavier after pulling that sprint from the Collectors. Samara and Thane are their quiet selves, but something bubbles from the more rambunctious members of her mismatched group. Jack and Grunt are the farthest from her, but she can hear the beating of the krogan's fist onto his armor. It is followed by the biotic's boisterous and heavy laugh, as they go on about ending the battle with a bang. Zaeed soon follows with his own accented laughter filling the hall. Then, the others soon filter in with their own tired and nervous versions because they are alive, but it's only a temporary gain in a much longer strife. Her own laughter is acidic within her mouth with the copper taste of the blood attempting from her mouth. Yet, she laughs –long and winded- as it aches the left side of her body, probably due to a wound that she received during one of the many firefights. However, she turns around surprised when she hears laughter coming from the cockpit. Her blue eyes met the green ones of the man that has been with her since she marched through hell the first time to fight the Reapers.

"We kicked their scaly asses, Commander!"

"Yeah…"

* * *

><p>Avery Shepard is not one for dramatics, it was not the way her military parents had raised her. However, that does not stop her from muttering ever curse word –human and alien alike- as she paces back and forth. As a perfectionist, she does not like losing control of anything that is hers, especially her emotions to some ornery bastard. She sighs, prepared to punch the sliver metal of the Normandy's haul, but she does not. Instead, she stares at it for a very long time, her fists turning white as she closes and opens her hands repeatedly. It isn't right, but what can she do about it now?<p>

"Commander," says James appearing behind "is something wrong?"

"No, I'm fine," she says too quickly, while staring at the large window in front of her.

Shepard releases a shaky breath from her chapped lips, in order to stop her mind to process everything one last time. However, Akuze survivor finds herself comparing to a certain person because it is all that she can really do now. But, James is normal, an Alliance solider willing to listen to orders and not questions her decisions with some snarky comment to her a laugh out of her. James Vega is a normal human not one that hides behind an air of confidence and witty humor. The man behind her is a good solider through and though. He will be willing to what is requested of him from his superior officers, not put on a show and do the impossible to say her. She swears that James is not like that and maybe it is for the best. At least, he would find someone to settle down with one day –_a normal human girl_, providing that they survived against the Reapers first- rather than go with a mechanical china doll with the face of a dead woman. Unlike herself, who had lost too much and would probably lose more by the end of the war, but she would was getting used to that.

"Did you need me for something, Vega?"

"The Qurian generals are looking to…" she nods as the young solider goes on about what going on since she left earlier in the evening, because there are bigger things than her and her non-existent love life.

There is so much more to do, so she will wear a tight smile and think of battle strategies for the races she has to gather. Ignore them in the cockpit she used to love to visit and move on with the loss like she has before. Two years had gone in a flash and these feelings will as well. She will laugh and trade old stories with Garrus and Tali since their time apart, share a drink with Chakhwas and give into the second chance that she has been given.

_"A platonic symbiosis, my ass."_


End file.
